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Post by stephen on Jan 5, 2019 4:44:07 GMT
Hot take: This movie is balls. I'm still fresh from cleaning the vomit out of my mouth, so this won't be very organized. My first item of contention is experiential. I grew up in a Christian environment, a lot of Christian people... I have never in my life encountered anyone who speaks or thinks the way these "characters" do. But we can chalk that up to me being raised around people who acted normal, because they are normal. With normal concerns, normal joys, normal hobbies. Not one character in First Reformed is normal (they're all mouthpieces for Schrader's sermon screed), and maybe that's part of the point. But... what is this movie about? "Faith?" Bull. It's about a prick who thinks the world revolves around him and throws a tantrum if anyone challenges the belief that he's always right. It doesn't help that nobody offers convincing arguments that he's always right, because Schrader believes that he's always right. What this movie isn't about is faith. It isn't about wrestling with a conscience, because Schrader's agenda is too clear to allow for that level of nuance. It isn't about wrestling with faith in God's goodness or power, because the protagonist never cares about any other person in the whole movie, and if he can't care about them, he sure as hell (see what I did there?) can't care about God. If Schrader had made the movie knowing this, he could have made something interesting: the self-absorbed prophet so caught up in his message that he forces away the flock. But instead, he's a stand-in for the author... who is a self-absorbed filmmaker so caught up in his message that he forces away his audience. I'll stick with Fiddler on the Roof and its portrayal of a father wrestling toe-to-toe with his God over the right of his children to be happy, and if God ever promised them that. I'll take Till We Have Faces and its portrayal of someone who loves her sister so much that she can't bear for some deity to take away her affections. I'll watch Madoka Magica, with its sinners so deep in their own sins that no god could ever forgive them, because they can't forgive themselves. But I won't take this infested, preachy bullshit. Pissed off rant over. I'm not as fervently passionate about it as you are, but yeah, can't really disagree with any of this. It's a preachy screed, all right. Hawke's pretty good, though, and would make a worthy winner over his strongest competition (Malek unseen, that is).
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Post by Martin Stett on Jan 5, 2019 5:50:44 GMT
I'm not as fervently passionate about it as you are, but yeah, can't really disagree with any of this. It's a preachy screed, all right. Hawke's pretty good, though, and would make a worthy winner over his strongest competition (Malek unseen, that is). Why thanks, Stephen. It's still better than You Were Never Really Here, so that's something.
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Post by stephen on Jan 5, 2019 5:53:44 GMT
I'm not as fervently passionate about it as you are, but yeah, can't really disagree with any of this. It's a preachy screed, all right. Hawke's pretty good, though, and would make a worthy winner over his strongest competition (Malek unseen, that is). Why thanks, Stephen. It's still better than You Were Never Really Here, so that's something. Yeah, no.
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Film Socialism
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Post by Film Socialism on Jan 5, 2019 16:48:45 GMT
does anyone here have firsthand experience w schrader? he's presenting the movie right down the street from me next week but i don't really want to go bc he seems like he's an asshole and while i like the movie i don't like it that much
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Jan 5, 2019 16:53:22 GMT
Wait a gosh darn second... pollution and global warming are bad?!
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 5, 2019 17:04:10 GMT
does anyone here have firsthand experience w schrader? he's presenting the movie right down the street from me next week but i don't really want to go bc he seems like he's an asshole and while i like the movie i don't like it that much I have met him at a lecture a few years ago on Robert Bresson's "Pickpocket". He was a fascinating guy to me, but as you can see from the reaction to First Reformed (I loved it) - a lot of people are going to think he's a asshole just from an artistic perspective much less a personal one. A lot of what he did in the Pickpocket lecture was discuss how the audience sees certain things and how it influenced his writing and what he borrows from it from directorial perspective. Some people might be disappointed with that from him because he has clear things that have to be served by the script so it's possible to view him as sort of rigid and inflexible (or if you're a fan you can view him as extremely principled and dedicated to the integrity of the screenplay). I'd say if it doesn't cost much to see him, you should check it out - you always learn something by hearing a great artist speak, even if its the opposite of what he thinks he's sharing and for me Schrader, Mamet, Towne are a sort of dying breed of a certain great writing era in American film and theater.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 5, 2019 21:00:51 GMT
Hawke just won NSFC today - that's a major win, I wonder if that gets him in (Dafoe runner-up)
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Jan 5, 2019 21:22:17 GMT
Hawke just won NSFC today - that's a major win, I wonder if that gets him in (Dafoe runner-up) I hope he does. While I didn't like the film, he was undeniably pretty great (and oddly enough I felt the same about Boyhood).
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Post by jakesully on Jan 7, 2019 1:57:53 GMT
Just saw this for the 1st time and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the bizarre ending . Just didn't seem plausible to me but I did like a lot of things about this film overall. Especially the dialogue thru out and the lead performance by Hawke . withholding a rating for this for now cause I am still trying to understand some of the 3rd act (esp the abrupt ending haha)
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jan 7, 2019 2:00:35 GMT
Just saw this for the 1st time and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the bizarre ending . Just didn't seem plausible to me but I did like a lot of things about this film overall. Especially the dialogue thru out and the lead performance by Hawke . withholding a rating for this for now cause I am still trying to understand some of the 3rd act (esp the abrupt ending haha) Seen it twice and I feel exactly the same. That jarring cut-to-black throws a wrench into all my interpretations because it's so harsh.
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magdafr
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Post by magdafr on Jan 10, 2019 1:44:17 GMT
I don't understand why nobody here mentioned this movie is an adaptation/remake of Bergman's Winter Light. Absolutely the same structure, almost the same story. Only the end is different.
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Post by Martin Stett on Jan 10, 2019 4:03:53 GMT
I don't understand why nobody here mentioned this movie is an adaptation/remake of Bergman's Winter Light. Absolutely the same structure, almost the same story. Only the end is different. Is it as crappy as this?
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chris3
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I just ordered a slice of pumpkin pie...
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Post by chris3 on Jan 10, 2019 7:52:29 GMT
I just watched Winter Light for the first time. And, uhh... it's like the same movie. The first two thirds match the structure beat for beat. Is this okay? I mean, where's the line between homage and plagiarism here? This is way more overt than the Blue Jasmine Original/Adapted Screenplay debate. I knew going in that it would have some thematic and stylistic similarities, but I didn't think it would be that similar. It's basically a remake. Oh and Winter Light was absolutely excellent and quite superior to First Reformed (which I also really like, but I must admit I feel somewhat hoodwinked after seeing Bergman's film).
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 10, 2019 11:23:32 GMT
I totally think it's the same movie, you know except for the setting, the language, the ending, the specific and completely RIGHT NOW issue at its center, the way that issue at the center then ties directly into America and capitalism, the death of the son, etc. that make Schrader's film utterly his own and within his own defined aesthetic that he's spent a career addressing. This has been brought up before, and it's a headscratcher to me - talent borrows, genius steals - he steals as much from Bresson here as he does Bergman, the trick is to make your work your own and that's what First Reformed does. In a(nother) year of dead history real or cinematic claiming to be relevant in 2019 (Blackkklansman, Vice, Green Book, First Man Bohemian Rhapsody, um, ASIB, Mary Poppins ) - First Reformed is the rarest of all things - it's great and relevant to the now - it knowingly takes from the 2 tenets of Godlike filmmakers and from that created something that speaks to this time. That's not plagiarism at all, rather that's Schrader adhering closer to a form of classicism. God (pun intended) bless him.
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oneflyr
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Post by oneflyr on Jan 10, 2019 12:12:16 GMT
discount diary of a country priest/winter light
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Post by Mattsby on Jan 11, 2019 2:47:44 GMT
Great interview from a few days ago. www.vulture.com/2019/01/paul-schrader-in-conversation.htmlThe interviewer, as Bugs Bunny would say, is a bit of a maroon. But this piece is worth reading with Schrader dropping all sorts of sly digs - Pauline Kael, Scorsese, etc. I've been devouring a lot of Schrader's interviews and talks lately -- like Mamet (and De Palma too, there are only so few) you never get the sense that he's mincing words or coming off as dishonest. And thru that you get gems of insight. Instead of the new normal, from most people now, responses that are filtered, contrite, or cutesy.
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speeders
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Post by speeders on Jan 11, 2019 14:56:07 GMT
This film has really stayed with me since I saw it in October. I had zero faith in this (no pun intended) until it blew up about halfway through the year with immense goodwill. As someone who has really disliked Ethan Hawke in the past, don't have much confidence in the man who last made The Canyons and is so over Amanda Seyfried, I kept pushing this back until I saw it in October. It took a long while to get started and draw me in until it had me fully immersed. Hawke was surprisingly excellent hear and his constant award snub has been disheartening. A beautiful performance. I was also surprised by his chemistry with Amanda Seyfried. Thought it was very biting and relevant in its portrayal of global warming and that put a fresh spin in what otherwise could have been a heartless Taxi Driver knock off. The film was extremely atmospheric, absorbing, intelligent, thought-provoking and beautiful in its vulnerability and rawness. Very haunting.
8.5/10
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Jan 11, 2019 22:36:15 GMT
#1 of the year so far for me. Wrote this bit on Letterboxd..
One of a handful of American movies this decade that seems to be saying anything at all. In terms of theme and structure it has been superficially compared to WINTER LIGHT--a minor Bergman film of hardly any urgency. There’s also a clear homage to DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST, but the 21st century priest of FIRST REFORMED would have been utterly unintelligible to Bresson. Schrader’s film is actually a highly original, individual work, precisely because the mood is new. This is a vision of slumbering, sleepwalking America in present time, and it’s disturbing to watch it unfold: it has the unreality of a dream. At times it shares an essence with David Lynch’s 2017 reimagining of TWIN PEAKS, another mosaic of contemporary America that radiated an almost intolerable anxiety. The same toxic vapors abound here, but Schrader gives them clarity. His screenplay is as rich as it is flawed, but the flaws add to the vision, as in the cosmically charged scenes (characters float over the ashes of Earth...)
Ethan Hawke is amazing as the moody, self-involved, almost pathetically afraid modern priest, who is cut off from God, his fellow men and nature itself (he’s in the process of dying). Paralyzed by moral terror, he begins to fantasize with self-destruction. Martyrdom in FIRST REFORMED takes on a new ghastliness and squalor--it’s the only way of making noise, but it’s dead noise, and instead of setting off an alarm it becomes part of the filth and corruption of the world. In this sense it’s a deeply American story of self-righteousness and a commentary on fanaticism (religious, political, ecological). The priest finds not the silence of God but his own moral ruin. This is the horror at the heart of the film: the monstrosity of cornered moral man.
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Post by pupdurcs on Jan 11, 2019 23:35:03 GMT
If this movie was the Emperor, it'd have no clothes.
A portentous, pretentious bore of a film that finally lost me at the point Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried entered Jor-El's Phantom Zone, or whatever the fuck that scene was. And I was really trying hard to like this movie.
A lot of high falutin' theological and climate change bunk makes the film sound intelligent, but there's nothing there. Nothing is plausible. Hawke, a very fine actor I've admired since Gattaca is stranded at sea with a script and direction that does him no favors. His late third act descent into Reverend Travis Bickle (along with his convinient conversion into a wannanbe eco-terroist) was ridiculous. How did this movie get such a pass?
It's very well shot. They maxed out a limited budget to make this look good. Lovely production design. Everything symmetrical. Some good drone shots thrown in where possible.
But the movie as a whole was just a chore.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 12, 2019 0:05:48 GMT
One thing not mentioned almost at all is the little visual cues Schrader adds to deepen what we see - in the amazing hymn that closes the last scene ("Oh how bright the path") his vestiment is leaking blood, the sparse desk lines it all up booze, journal, Drano, the drink is tossed on the floor until it seeps into the wood suggesting the way faith (or crisis or change) also seeps into us (lingered on in the shot itself I think), when he talks to Cedric about God being everywhere, that is when he turns his back and doesn't "see" Hawke any longer- up until that point they are having a talk and when that becomes the discussion he turns his chair.
We're all going to freak out if Schrader gets bypassed for his script, but his direction had lots of beautiful touches in it too like that....I've seen almost every film he's directed and I don't recall much of his directing being that in sync with his writing as much as it is here.
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Post by pupdurcs on Jan 12, 2019 0:11:44 GMT
One thing not mentioned almost at all is the little visual cues Schrader adds to deepen what we see - in the amazing hymn that closes the last scene ("Oh how bright the path") his vestiment is leaking blood, the sparse desk lines it all up booze, journal, Drano, the drink is tossed on the floor until it seeps into the wood suggesting the way Faith (or crisis or change) also seeps into us (lingered on in the shot itself I think), when he talks to Cedric about God being everywhere, that is when he turns his back and doesn't "see" Hawke any longer- up until that point they are having a talk and when that becomes the discussion he turns his chair. We're all going to freak out if Schrader gets bypassed for his script, but his direction had lots of beautiful touches in it too like that....I've seen almost every film he's directed and I don't recall much of his directing being that in sync with his writing as much as it is here. Still a dumb movie. And Schrader's script may be the biggest sleight-of-hand ever pulled in awards history. Just pepper your screenplay with endless discussions about theology and climate change, and watch critics ignore every other structural script problem that sinks this dreck. I think I may actually despise this movie.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 12, 2019 0:15:02 GMT
My #2 right now..........to each his own.
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Post by pupdurcs on Jan 12, 2019 0:16:19 GMT
And the romance novel kissy-kissy scene at the end! This movie is mostly restrained and somehow incredibly camp at the same time.
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wattsnew
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Post by wattsnew on Jan 14, 2019 10:40:24 GMT
#1 of the year so far for me. Wrote this bit on Letterboxd.. One of a handful of American movies this decade that seems to be saying anything at all. In terms of theme and structure it has been superficially compared to WINTER LIGHT--a minor Bergman film of hardly any urgency. There’s also a clear homage to DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST, but the 21st century priest of FIRST REFORMED would have been utterly unintelligible to Bresson. Schrader’s film is actually a highly original, individual work, precisely because the mood is new. This is a vision of slumbering, sleepwalking America in present time, and it’s disturbing to watch it unfold: it has the unreality of a dream. At times it shares an essence with David Lynch’s 2017 reimagining of TWIN PEAKS, another mosaic of contemporary America that radiated an almost intolerable anxiety. The same toxic vapors abound here, but Schrader gives them clarity. His screenplay is as rich as it is flawed, but the flaws add to the vision, as in the cosmically charged scenes (characters float over the ashes of Earth...)
Ethan Hawke is amazing as the moody, self-involved, almost pathetically afraid modern priest, who is cut off from God, his fellow men and nature itself (he’s in the process of dying). Paralyzed by moral terror, he begins to fantasize with self-destruction. Martyrdom in FIRST REFORMED takes on a new ghastliness and squalor--it’s the only way of making noise, but it’s dead noise, and instead of setting off an alarm it becomes part of the filth and corruption of the world. In this sense it’s a deeply American story of self-righteousness and a commentary on fanaticism (religious, political, ecological). The priest finds not the silence of God but his own moral ruin. This is the horror at the heart of the film: the monstrosity of cornered moral man.Fantastic post. It's certainly the most meaningful and thought provoking film of the year.
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Post by Viced on Jan 22, 2019 14:29:27 GMT
It's about damn time.
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